Banpo

The site of an early Yangshao Neolithic village, now a museum at Xi'an, China, in the basin of the confluence of the Yellow River (Huang Ho), the Fen Ho, and Kuei Shui. Radiocarbon dates range from c 4800-4300 BC. The settlement was about 50,000 sq. meters and included a cemetery and pottery kilns outside a ditch that surrounded the residences. Dogs, cattle, sheep, chicken and pigs were domesticated and millet, rice, kaoling, and possibly soybeans grown. The horse and silkworm may also have been raised. Unpainted pottery was cord-marked or stamped, and fine ceremonial pottery vessels were painted in black or red with some simple geometric patterns and drawings of fish turtles deer and faces. There were some elaborately worked objects in jade as well as everyday objects made from flint bone and groundstone. Sites with similar remains have been excavated at nearby Jiangzhai Baoji Beishouling and Hua Xian Yuanjunmiao. These sites all exhibit the first evidence of food production in China.

[Pan-p’o]. Site of an early Yangshao Neolithic village, now preserved as a museum, at Xi’an in Shaanxi province, China. Four radiocarbon dates from Banpo range from c4800 to o4300 bc. The settlement occupied about 50,000 square metres and included a cemetery and pottery kilns outside a ditch that surrounded the residential area. Dogs and pigs were domesticated, and millet was the staple crop. Unpainted pottery was cord-marked or stamped, while the finest pottery was painted in black or red with a limited range of simple geometric patterns and drawings of fish, turtles, deer and masked or stylized faces, pictorial motifs rarely encountered elsewhere in Chinese Neolithic pottery. Remains comparable to those from Banpo have been unearthed nearby at Jiangzhai in Lintong Xian and at Baoji Beishouling and Hua Xian Yuanjunmiao, all in Shaanxi. At Beishouling and Yuanjunmiao, Banpo-type remains overlie older Neolithic levels in which all the pottery is unpainted; a radiocarbon date late in the 6th millennium bc has been obtained for an equivalent stratum at Hua Xian Laoguantai. Dates in the same range have come from Neolithic sites at Wuan Cishan in southern Hebei and Xinzheng Peiligang in Henan, both with evidence of millet cultivation and domesticated pigs and dogs.